Saturday Night Live Pokes Fun at Virus That's Killed Nearly 300,000 Americans

Saturday Night Live has two episodes left in the season, and the live sketch show is trying to end the season with a bang. With Timothee Chalamet making his hosting debut Saturday, the Lorne Michaels-led show started the latest episode with a skit poking fun at the coronavirus pandemic. Featuring SNL mainstays Beck Bennett and Cecily Strong, the bit started off by establishing "The Ronas" were getting together for the holidays.

One thing led to another and series newcomers Lauren Holt and Andrew Dismukes shortly joined the fray, and the entire family got together to brag about their accomplishments over the year — one-upping each other over the celebrities they infected or how many populated areas they "took down."

Chalamet himself popped up before not too long as a disinfected strain of COVID, acting as the family failure. By the end of the skit, the family makes amends and decides to infect former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Most experts suggest the coronavirus pandemic has never been more detrimental to the United States healthcare infrastructure than it is at the moment, with hospitals across the country quickly running out of the room.

For the past week, at least 1,500 Americans have succumbed to the virus each day and according to the New York Times, the country is on-pace to cross 300,000 total coronavirus deaths by the end of the weekend.

Even then, Michaels himself has advocated for an in-person audience at 30 Rock, saying it's integral to the success of the show.

"We need the audience, obviously. With comedy, when you don't hear the response, it's just different. With the kind of comedy we do, which quite often is broad, timing gets thrown off without an audience," Michaels said earlier this year.

He added, "And for me, what is most important is when you're absolutely certain of some piece on Wednesday, and then the dress-rehearsal audience sees it on Saturday and tells you you're wrong. . . .I think us coming back and accomplishing the show will lead to — I hate to use the word normalcy — but it's a thing that is part of our lives coming back, in whatever form it ends up coming back. So the physical problems of doing it — number of people who can be in the studio, number of people who can be in the control room, how you separate the band so that they're not in any jeopardy — all of those are part of the meetings we've been having."

Saturday Night Live airs on NBC Saturday nights starting at 11:30 p.m. Eastern.